Physical Confinement In The Yellow Wallpaper

Many animals require a vast amount of space to properly function. Elephants, for example, migrate 62 miles per year. When confined in cages or fenced areas in zoos, animals often act aggressively, as captivity has adverse effects on wildlife. Humans are mammals that are also not meant to be trapped, as our nature guides us towards duties and specific occupations fit for our location and physique. Confinement can be experienced in both literal and psychological ways: one can be stuck in the boundaries of their reality and stuck within their own head. While I have not experienced physical confinement, other than temporary teenage groundings, I have been mentally restrained my entire life. The process of filtering one’s thoughts is not only difficult, but also incredibly exhausting. In The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is physically confined and eventually becomes trapped within her fantasies, and while the breakdown the narrator experiences is blamed on nerves, in reality it is because the narrator is not free. Woolf, in “A Room of One’s
Her husband is a doctor and she has a newborn son, yet she finds herself feeling troubled. While psychiatrists today would diagnose the narrator with post-partum depression and anxiety, the technology at this time was not up to par, and treatments were not as effective. Today, people who are diagnosed with depression are usually placed in counseling, are advised to try new things and are sometimes given medication to help with the hormone imbalance. In 1898, however, when Gilman wrote this, a person suffering from depression, especially a woman, was hurt more than helped, as her treatment plan required strict house-arrest and very little human contact. When left alone with one’s thoughts, often a person’s condition will worsen, as they begin to obsess as they question the origins of these thoughts and nature of their